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Capturing the unquantifiable scale of his nation’s consumerism, American photographer Chris Jordan uses large-scale imagery to illustrate the growing strain placed on our environment. As an almost coda to 99 Cent II Diptychon by Gursky, Jordan uses everyday objects to emphasize our individual responsibility to this growing ecological concern. His arresting images attune the viewer to the consequences of a cultural obsession with the new and little regard for the waste that it entails.
In his 2003-05 series entitled “Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption”, Chris Jordan focuses on the end of the line of consumer capitalism. With stark parallels to the global urban environments that create these miniature cities of waste, skyscrapers of shipping containers and avenues of rusting oil drums grow every higher in his photographs.
Jordan starkly illuminates the individual’s role in creating these reliant and growing testaments to the gratification of now – with little thought of the consequences of tomorrow.
